Summary: Lead generation is a critical part of every business because without an adequate supply of leads, it's impossible to maintain a business. So where do the bulk of your new leads come from these days and where do your best leads come from? Online, offline, or both?<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi and welcome to the podcast. Today co-host Chris Templeton and I will be talking lead sourcing, meaning where your leads are coming from. Welcome Chris.<br> <br> Chris: Hi David. Interesting point that you made in the introduction, which is that you may get the bulk of your leads from one source, but your best leads from somewhere else. And it does happen that way sometimes, doesn't it?<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Need Help with This?<br> <br> <br> <a href="https://www.topsecrets.com/call/" class="button-style-2 button-style-2-green">Schedule a Call</a><br> <br> <br> David: Yeah, it actually happens that way quite a bit. And there's a very often a big difference between the quantity of leads that we get and the quality of leads that we get and they don't always go together. The places where we're getting the most leads might not be the best quality leads. I know a lot of times when I'm talking to salespeople and business owners and I ask them where their best leads come from, almost inevitably they say referrals. You know, referrals are their primary source of leads and while referrals are a great source of leads and very often a very high quality source of leads, they're not always the most prolific. In other words, you don't always get as many of them as you want. So recognizing that there's a difference between the bulk of the leads that are coming in and the quality of the leads and the fact that those are two different things can be helpful.<br> <br> Chris: How do we go about the process of balancing that quality/quantity equation of leads?<br> <br> David: Well, it starts with testing the quality of your leads with a consistent approach to the leads that you get. In other words, whenever we get a lead, we want to make sure that we're treating them exactly the same because if we get 10 different leads and we treat each of them differently, then we're not going to know if they closed because of the approach we took or if it was the lead itself. So we want to first start out by having a consistent approach to the leads we get in. If we get 10 leads in, we want to try to treat them as close as we possibly can to exactly the same way, then you can take a look at who closed and who didn't. And that will help you to determine which ones are good and which ones are bad. And at that point it's easier then, to start to work to get more good leads and you can also potentially work to improve the conversion on the bad leads or the ones that didn't convert. So, it's sort of a balance looking at quantity first and saying, “Okay, if I treat them all the same, which ones close?”, and then say, “All right, if they close, then that makes them by default good leads.”, and then looking at that and extrapolating from there,<br> <br> Chris: I think you bring up a really good point, which is not said specifically, but you know, if you ask most business people about where their leads come from, their best leads, they're going to say referrals. But I'm not convinced that all businesses are doing all that great a job of tracking leads. Are you?<br> <br> David: No, I'm not at all. And basically, it's because when I ask them, they'll tell you that. They'll say that they know they need to do a better job of tracking their leads, but they just don't. I think most businesses do have a reasonable idea of where their leads are coming from and very often, they know that they wish there were more leads coming in. They might have, you know,
